“There are other options,” she said quietly. “I shouldn’t have brought your father up, and I’m sorry about that. But there is the option to love someone. Stand by them. Be good to them, even when you don’t feel romantic. That’s an option, too.”
“Yeah...” Colt sucked in a breath.
“Your dad shouldn’t have left you and your mother,” she said. “And Beau shouldn’t have been so awful to Sandra. They all should have been better to each other, kinder.”
“You chose that route,” Colt said. “You stayed with Josh and you loved him. But now that he’s gone, you don’t want to get married again because that was hard. And it hurt. And you’d rather be alone after all of that. So I’m not sure that your way was ideal, either. There was still collateral damage, wasn’t there? That collateral damage was you.”
Jane’s heart clenched as his glittering gaze met hers. She looked toward the window again where Suzie stood with her palm against the glass.
Wait. Where was Micha?
She looked around the room, and there was no sign of her. There wasn’t anywhere she could hide, was there?
Jane went to the staircase and looked up. “Micha?” She waited, listening. There was nothing but the sound of hammering rain on the roof, a distant drip from somewhere overhead. Nothing else. Jane looked back at Colt, dread rising inside her. “Did you see where she went?”
Colt strode to the staircase and went up, taking two stairs at a time. The wooden structure creaked under his weight, and he stopped at the top, ducking his head against the buckling roof. He could see the sky through a rather large hole, and the rain was letting up. The patter of raindrops on the wooden floor was gentler now. He looked around the second floor, scanning for signs of the toddler, but there wasn’t really anywhere to hide. The second floor was nearly as empty as downstairs—an old iron bed frame leaning against one wall, a few paper bags from McDonald’s crumpled up in a corner... Those were from him and Josh visiting this place fifteen years ago!
His gaze snapped around the upstairs. There used to be a wall up here that separated some sleeping areas, but he and Josh had knocked it down one year for no reason at all. Just boys destroying stuff.
He wished he hadn’t.
Colt came down to find Jane at the back door.
“Do you see her?” Colt asked.
“Nope.” She scooped up Suzie and headed out into the rain. Colt jogged down the stairs and followed her outside.
“Micha!” he called. “Where are you, kiddo?”
“Micha!” Jane called.
The rain stopped nearly as quickly as it had started, and as he tramped through the long grass, he could hear Jane calling in the other direction.
Where was she? His heart hammered in his throat, and he sent up a silent prayer for help. The toddler was out here somewhere, because she sure wasn’t in the house.
Colt circled around the front of the cabin, and he heard some rustling by the front step. Micha was crouching in the shelter of the overhanging porch, a caterpillar in her hands.
“Look!” Her face lit up when she saw him.
“There you are,” he sighed, and beyond them, he could hear Jane’s frantic call. “Mommy’s calling you, Micha. Don’t you hear her?”
“Mommy!” Micha called back cheerfully. “Mommy!”
Jane came around the corner just then, Suzie on her hip and her face white with relief.
“Micha! Where did you go?” Jane said, sinking down to her haunches and holding her free arm out.
“Look!” Micha said, marching toward her mother and holding out the caterpillar.
“Yeah, wonderful,” Jane said, and her tone was so dry that Colt couldn’t help but smile.
“That girl is a runner,” Colt said.
“She is.” Jane pulled Micha in a for a hug. “You stop running off, Micha. You worried Mommy.”
“Oh, Mama...” Micha put a dirty hand on the side of Jane’s face with a look of sympathy which immediately melted into an impish grin. “Look!”
She held up the caterpillar again, and Suzie reached for it, which brought on a squeal of upset from Micha, who didn’t want to give up her prize to her sister, but the caterpillar was dropped. Jane sighed and stood up, leaving the girls to tussle at her feet.
“I feel a bit responsible for that,” Colt said.
“Don’t,” she said with a sigh. “Apparently, I argue with you a little too easily.”
The sun started to come out, and just behind her a rainbow came into view. Standing there with her hands on her hips, her jeans wet at the bottom from the rain-soaked grass and that dark gaze of hers locked on him, he found himself suddenly at a loss for words.
She was gorgeous.
She turned then and stopped.
“Look, girls, a rainbow,” she said, then she glanced back at him. “You know how in the Bible it says that after the flood God sent a rainbow to reassure the people that he wouldn’t put them through that again?”
“Yeah?”
“Sometimes I wish God would make that deal with me,” she said. “That I’ve experienced my worst. I won’t have to go through anything that hard again.”
Jane turned away again, not waiting for him to reply, and he watched her crouch down and point to the rainbow for the toddlers’ benefit.
It was strange that they’d just argued about the value of marriage in that little cabin, and for what? She didn’t want another husband, and he didn’t want a wife. But there was something between them that didn’t sit easily—maybe it was Josh’s memory. Because he felt drawn to her for no reason he could see—just wanted to be with her, listen to her, help her out, and all they ended up doing was bickering because she wanted marriage to mean something, and for some reason that irritated him.
Maybe she was right and it had to do with his dad.
“Jane, I don’t mean to keep arguing with you over dumb stuff,” Colt said. “You should know
